The 'Dark Phoenix' Final Trailer Is Here to Tell You the Whole Movie

By Mike Redmond | Film | April 17, 2019 |

By Mike Redmond | Film | April 17, 2019 |

On Monday, Alanna Bennett dropped a Twitter thread on how hard it is for female directors with serious accolades to get a foot in the studio door. One of the examples she cited sums up my overall feelings on Dark Phoenix nicely.

The writer of X-Men: Last Stand — a movie so ill-received by X-Men fans it's become a joke — was hired to *DIRECT* DARK PHOENIX, the studio's way of RE-DOING LAST STAND. A literal re-do. Women, & esp WoC, don't get the first chance at that let alone the show of faith of a SECOND.

— alanna bennett (@AlannaBennett) April 15, 2019

Granted, Bennett’s missing the part where I can’t wait for these Bryan Singer-tainted versions of the characters to go the hell away and be replaced with shiny, new Marvel Cinematic Universe ones, but you get the point here. Dark Phoenix is a remake of X-Men: The Last Stand, and it really doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot to prove it’s not a lazy rehash. I mean, Jesus Christ, they couldn’t figure out how to show Jean Grey is evil without putting her in a trenchcoat. Again.

That said, the final Dark Phoenix trailer is easily the strongest preview, but the competition wasn’t exactly stiff. (Phrasing.) On top of that, it literally walks you through the entire plot of the movie just in case you couldn’t figure out the very simple basics: Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey gets infected with the Phoenix Force, the X-Men stand around debating whether or not to kill an all-powerful being that’s dropping bodies to impress Jessica Chastain’s eyebrow-less alien person, and Jennifer Lawrence sleepwalks through every single one of her lines. Whee?

Dark Phoenix hits theaters in June, and Mike’s Blu-ray player whenever Redbox gets it.